Smart cards come in different sizes, but all are formed of a thin plate of plastic with embedded circuitry connected to contact pads on a lower face of the card. The contact pads can be connected to electronic circuitry by a connector that has pad-engaging contact parts that press against the pads. It is often desirable to construct the connector with xe2x80x9clandingxe2x80x9d contacts whose pad-engaging parts are held away from the slot, or which press only very lightly into the slot, until the card becomes fully inserted. As the card reaches its fully inserted position, pad-engaging parts of the contacts can press firmly against the pads on the card. This reduces wear on the pad-engaging parts of the contacts.
It has been proposed to provide landing contacts by the use of a pivoting element that is biased by a pair of compression springs to a position where a part of the pivoting element lies in the path of the card, with cams controlling pivoting of a separate lever. Reduction of wear is obtained by using metal rollers, and by using pivot pins to reduce wear in pivoting. All of these separate elements complicate the design, increase its height, and increase the cost. A connector for receiving a smart card and providing landing contacts for engaging the contact pads of the card, which minimized the number of separate parts while assuring high wear resistance despite numerous repeated uses of the connector, in a construction of low height and simple and inexpensive design, would be desirable.
In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, a smart card connector is provided which includes contacts having pad-engaging parts that can be landed on the contact pads of the card when the card becomes fully inserted, which uses a minimum number of easily formed parts in a reliable and simple construction. The connector includes a rocker with a pivoting control part having a rear portion lying at the rear of the slot to be deflected by the fully inserted card. The rocker is coupled to the contacts to land them only when the card is close to its full insertion portion. The rocker is formed from a single piece of sheet metal and includes fasteners that are fixed to the housing of the connector and that also includes a pair of integral deflect portions that connect the fasteners to opposite ends of the control part. The deflect portions allow the control part to pivot by resilient deformation of the deflect portions.
The deflect portions bias the control part towards a position where it lies in the slot, by each deflect portion having a torsion bar that is twisted about the axis of pivoting.
The connector includes a lever that is pivotally mounted on the housing about a second axis that is spaced from the axis of pivoting of the control part. The lever has a rear end that is engaged with the contacts to move them in at least one vertical direction, and with the rear end of the lever also engaged with a front end of the control part so the control part can control pivoting of the lever.